Thursday, May 19, 2011

Gaming at home!

I've been home from Korea for a week, and actually got to play some real games, on a real table...with dice and minis and everything! I'll be going back to Korea in a week or so, though...more Kimchi and Soju for me!

Here's a little update of what I've done gaming-wise the last week or so...
The day after I got back from Korea I want to the FLGS and picked up my order: some Panther Tanks for Flames of War, and for my Legion: a Scythean and Raek!

For Flames, our local group has moved in to late-war. I picked up the new Earth & Steel force book, which includes a lot of fun force lists for Western Front! I came up with four basic force compositions I want to aim for: Infantry-heavy with no (or one super-heavy) armor, just AT guns, Artillery, and rock-hard Infantry; my good-old Aufklarung Kompanie from 21st Panzer, with a few low-end tanks; a Tiger Kompanie with 5 Tigers and a couple Infantry Platoons to support (including an Engineer platoon with flamethrowers); and a 12SS Panzer group with some Panther Tanks and solid Infantry. To that end, I bought 7 Panther tanks now, allowing me to field all of them along with some recon, a full platoon of Halftrack MG Infantry, and some Rocket Launchers. I hope the Panthers are as good as they look, because wow are they a lot of points!

But my real excitement was my Raek and Scythean. This allows me to field my now favorite (and I think 'hardest') Tier 4 Absylonia list:

Absylonia
Seraph
Scythean
Angelius
Raek
2 Shredder
Harrier

3 Forsaken
Shepherd

Lots of tools, lots of of hitting power, lots of speed, respectable ranged firepower, and hopefully a solution for any problem.

I assembled and primed my new toys right away, and got this army on the table for two games Monday night against my friend Chris who was trying his new Circle force. In both games I was utterly amazed at how quickly these beasts clove through the Warpwolves while being extremely resilient to return damage...between Blight Field and crazy-high Defense, he was unable to do enough damage to slow down any of my beasts.

However, in both games I left myself open to assassination attempts from his very unconventional movement shennanigans. eKaya with Laris were popping things around all over the place, and only bad dice on his part (and I mean REALLY bad!) kept Absy alive to win the scenarios in both games. Never underestimate the power of bad dice!

Which brings up a deep thought: it doesn't take good dice to hold objectives. I can fly Angelius in, use her Animus to push folks away from a flag, and get a point...no dice required. In 40k, you can assault a unit on an objective such that they have to pile-in away from the objective...no dice required. If I can find some way to avoid rolling dice, I'll take it...

I got a Vassal game in the other day, against a nice gent named Toby from the UK. He was using Trolls led by Borka Kegslayer. He had a Mauler, a Winter Troll, and a Bouncer. A full unit of Kriel Warriors with UA and 3 Caber Tossers (yeah Highland games!) and a full unit of Trollkin Champions were there, too. Lots of Tough with no Knockdown to tie me up...yeah.

We played the Scenario "Incursion", which had three flags along the centerline of the table, but one of them was removed randomly at the start of the second turn.

He went first, with the Warriors spread out across the front of his force, the Champions behind, and the big Trolls following them. Everything ran up the table, almost halfway already!

My first turn and I danced around, trying to avoid getting charged. A little shooting dropped a few warriors...I actually killed the Standard Bearer to take away their Steady first-thing, but the damned troll passed his Tough test!

After the first turn we rolled, and the middle objective flag disappeared.

His second turn and he again ran the Warriors to tie up all my forces he could reach. The bulk of his forces ran to the left part of the table, but nothing went towards the right-most flag...

So on my turn I started up my shennanigans. The Raek jumped behind the Mauler and weapon-locked him. A Forsaken moved up and Blight Shroud killed off the Kriel standard-bearer...lucky! The Seraph slipstreamed the Scythean away from the warriors engaging him, and shot down the right-most Kriel warrior. This freed up the Scythean to walk around behind the warriors and start hitting the Winter Troll. The Special Attack killed both Warriors, while a bought attack finished off the Winter Troll, preventing the Scythean from being Stationary. A Shredder ran over to the right-most flag, which secured me a point. Absylonia put a Blight on the Mauler, slipped Angelius, and hid behind the hill. Angelius then slipped around a bit to kill a few more Warriors and cover Absylonia. Forsaken loaded up on Fury from the heavies, though I was running a bit hot.

So top of Turn 3, I'm up 1-0 on Scenario points. He's stuck on the wrong side of the map, with nothing really able to get to the right-flag. He moved the Warriors to clear space for Champions and put some attacks on Forsaken and Angelius. A Forsaken died, Raek took a small hit, but the Angelius was protected by Def 17. The Champoins moved in to kill the Raek, even with his Def 16 he went down easy. The Mauler couldn't run or charge because of the blight, so he simply advanced around towards my side of the hill. The Bouncer ran around the bottom side of the hill, probably hoping to get to the right flag soon. A pretty uneventful turn.

After which I pointed out that I'd just got my second point, that he'd left nothing to score on the left-flag, so I was up 2-0 now, and that at the end of my turn I'd get my 3rd point, so all I had to do was end my turn and I win...basically he forgot about the scenario and was playing to kill.

We did press on briefly, with a failed assassination attempt by Angelius (who couldn't roll a 6 on 3-dice...) but the game was over at this point.

I've done about half a dozen Scenarios with this army, and am really pleased with how well it handles getting in to claim objectives while surviving and taking away the enemy's objectives. This is the army I want to paint up decent and take to real tournaments! However, for Steamroller format stuff, I need a second Legion force!

I've played two all-beast armies now, pMorghoul and Absylonia. I want something that works very differently. I want lots of infantry, and a feat that does something a bit more "sexy" than pMorg's denial and Absy's attrition -type feats.

Includes all non character warbeast then also our current three headed friend
Nyss swordsmen and ogre units
Solos - nyss sheperds, ogrun solos, succubus!!

Tier 1 models above. Models have a hard time shooting you first turn FA increases of ogrun solo per unit.
Tier 2 - includes one or more nyss sword guys units - free UA
Tier 3 - includes our three headed beast - begin the game with upkeeps in play without paying their cost.
Tier 4 - two or more ogre guy units - ogruns gdeploy further ahead

I like the Tier benefits...getting the big slow Ogrun up the table quicker while protecting them from first turn sniping seems fun. A free 3-point UA is free 3 points for something that's a must-take anyway. Upkeeps in play isn't THAT great, but it does allow Dash to be cast on first turn, enabling a really agressive first turn.

So with this in mind, I come up with this for 35 points:

Rhyas
Typhon
Seraph

10 Swordsmen & UA
3 Ogrun Warmongers
3 Ogrun Warspears

Warmonger Warchief

I'm not sold on the Warspears yet...I like the Feat-turn killing potentail of the Warmongers...on the other hand with only one Warchief I'd not be able to keep both units of Warmongers in his CMD (at least, it's not very likely). I'll have to decide if the utility of the ranged attack is worth more than the extra killiness of the Warmongers with some Vassal testing!

I got part-way thru a test-game against a Cryx list last night, but I'm not sure things are going my way. I'll post more about that battle after we move along a bit more (only on top of turn 3 now...both sides having Advance Deploy melee-troops made for a long first and second turn!).

More to come, along with the promised pics of the "finished" Heavy Beasts!